Cassandra Syndrome

If you're in a relationship where you care about each other, but keep missing each other, maybe you're having the same arguments over and over. Maybe one of you feels alone and the other feels stuck. Maybe you both want things to feel better, but you don't know how to get there. I see this all the time in my work with couples. Most people are not failing at relationships. They're just not having the right kinds of conversations. The relationship New Year Reset is a live workshop where I will guide you and your partner through seven conversations that will help you understand each other better and get back on the same page. You'll talk about the things couples usually avoid until they turn into fights, money, time, intimacy, goals, families, rituals and the changes that are coming your way. You get clear prompts and structure, so you're not fumbling or guessing what to say and you'll leave knowing what your partner actually needs and how to move forward together. If you want to feel closer, more connected and more like a team again, this workshop gives you a place to start. Join me live on the 28th of January for the Relationship New Year Reset. Find all the links and all the information in the show notes. Have you ever shared something that felt important and the other person just waived it away? You said, "Hey, that felt off." Or that was rude and you were told, "You're overreacting or that's not what happened." You start questioning yourself. Maybe you feel confused, even distressed. You can't quite explain why. It's not gaslighting and it's not malicious, but it still leaves you feeling unseen and unheard. And this is the space that we're sitting in today. In this episode of this complex life, I am talking about Cassandra Syndrome. I'll explore how the term has been used in the past and how it's being picked up in pop culture with a slightly different understanding and interpretation. I wanna take a look at where it's showing up in relationships. I'll share some of my initial hesitations around the term and what changed my mind and I'll give you some examples of how I see this show up in couples therapy and how I work with this dynamic in the therapy room and hopefully gives you some ideas of what you can do if this is something happening in your own life. Now, Cassandra Syndrome originally was used to describe people who spoke up and weren't believed. Think of climate scientists warning about climate change and warming oceans and told here now or activists warning about racism, abuse and inequality and not being believed and maybe sometimes even being punished for it. In medical settings, people, often women, reporting symptoms and being dismissed. These experiences are about seeing something clearly and being ignored or told that's not real. More recently, however, how I heard the term was around this in the context of neurodiverse relationships. Sometimes it's used by the neurotypical partners, so a neurotypical partner with a autistic partner, often male to female, the male autistic partner with the neurotypical female partner. And Ella was digging a bit deeper. I've seen it actually be used by the autistic partner as well, but this can happen in any combination of relationships, neurodivergent, neurotypical, both having neurodivergent traits or being neurodivergent, both being neurotypical. It actually goes, it can be used in a number of ways, but commonly in the pop culture and in the blogs and the videos that I've been reading and watching and the things I've been listening to, it tends to be used in this way to explain the impact on the neurotypical partner. Now the term has been used in very different ways and not always kindly and it captures a very real emotional experience and I'm always hesitant to use labels and I'll explain why in a little bit, but it's something that people have been asking for. So is Cassandra. Now Cassandra is a figure from Greek mythology and I don't remember learning about her back at Greek school when I was younger because I'm sure I would have used it as a probably would have used it many times and I thought I wasn't getting my way or I can see the truth. I'm sure my parents would have loved that. So Cassandra was a princess of Troy and Apollo gave her the gift of prophecy based on her sleeping with him. Now she backs out of this arrangement. He doesn't take away the gift, so Apollo still gives her the gift of prophecy but he curses her that she will tell the truth but no one will ever believe what she says and she warns people of Troy about the Trojan horse if you can remember that story where the big wooden horse is willed in. She speaks to truth but is ignored and her story is tragic but also incredibly relevant. It's about holding the truth and still being the Smiths. Now her plight has been associated with the struggle shed by anybody telling the truth but not being believed. Think Sarah Conner in the Terminator. You know, Judgment Day is coming and not only do people not believe her, they lock her up in a psychiatric institution. Okay, so that's the kind of stuff we're talking about here. There is an impact that this has on people and sometimes it's used as Cassandra syndrome. I've also heard it called Cassandra Effective Deprovation Disorder, C-A-D-D. Again, these are not formal diagnostic terms but that's to describe the long term deprivation of emotional attention and affection caused by traumatic suffering in the neurotypical partner and that has its whole history behind that. You can kind of have a bit of a look around and see how that was created but I want to talk about it in more general terms and firstly I want to start off by talking about how this is different to gaslighting and I've got a lot of bones to pick with this term gaslighting. It is used poorly and correctly so many times. Now Cassandra syndrome describes the emotional pain of being repeatedly dismissed or invalidated. One subjective experience I feel feeling hurt uncomfortable is an acknowledged. Often unintentional and comes from a mismatch in emotional styles or communication can lead to loneliness, self-doubt, relational trauma and physical symptoms in the long term. Gaslighting however, this is the key bit is a deliberate manipulation tactic where somebody actively undermines another person's reality. So gaslighting involves denial, trivializing feelings, lying and blame shifting to gain control or power. Typically a pattern of emotional abuse often in an unequal power dynamic. This causes deep or can cause deep self-doubt dependency on the manipulator and real long-lasting harm. So the key difference here is in deliberate and manipulative. So when we compare Cassandra syndrome to gaslighting the intent is different so in Cassandra syndrome it's usually unintentional in gaslighting we see a deliberate and manipulative intention there. The power dynamics change so in Cassandra syndrome this is often based on a miscommunication, mismatch and emotional styles. Kind of like speaking different languages. In gaslighting it often involves control, dominance or abuse. The experience for people can feel similar so we might think Cassandra syndrome feeling unheard, evaluated and emotionally exhausted. In gaslighting we see some of those but being made to doubt perception, memory and emotional experience. There are some similarities in the emotional outcome of these. So in Cassandra syndrome we're likely to see isolation, anxiety and then diminish self-worth and then gaslighting, deep confusion, dependency and trauma. Now the context changes a bit here as well. So Cassandra syndrome how it's been used in pop culture at the moment often talks about a neurodiverse neurotypical relationship or a relational mismatch. For gaslighting it comes across in various settings, intimate partnerships, family workplaces and institutions. So it extends to other contexts. But the biggest difference which really I can't stress enough is the deliberate manipulative intent for gaslighting. Now how this shows up in relationships? It shows up in a number of ways. So one person might say something like, "Oh, your mum was really rude to me and the other replies, "she wasn't rude to you being dramatic." Or they say this conversation made me feel small in their responses, that's not what happened at all. You know, the listener might be trying to reassure or correct for what they're doing is invalidating the other person's emotional experience. Now this isn't gaslighting. It's not manipulative or abusive. It's often coming from fear, confusion, discomfort or not even recognizing the importance of what that person's saying. But the impact on the speaker is still real. That person can start to shut down. They might stop sharing and they lose trust in their own feelings. And their relationship becomes less emotionally safe. Now, I was hesitant to talk about this. I used to cringe a bit when I first heard this term and I feel like it was shorthand for my autistic partner is the problem. And the initial things that I read, it came across in a very blamey way and I worried that it ignored relational patterns and complexity that it kept showing up. My clients were mentioning it and so I started looking into it a little bit more closely. I said, red heaps of blogs, watch videos, listen to different voices. And then I started to realize that it wasn't just about neurodivergent relationships. It was about the emotional experience of being unheard. And I've seen this happen across all kinds of couples. But we do see it in pop culture be talked about specifically to that combination of autistic to neurotypical partnership. And there are some reasons for that. I'll talk about a little bit more. Some of the challenges that those couples might face require additional support. I know as a therapist trying to understand people's communication style, their history, how they've learnt what they've learnt, how their brain interprets things is a really important piece of the work that we do so that we can support those skills, that relational skill, not masking and not being fake but evolving and adapting those skills to meet that context. Now the Cassandra metaphor has been expanded to include the effects of autism and ADHD and not only on the neurotypical partner but on both partners who struggle. When we look at the both way struggle communication that's often called the double empathy problem where each person thinks they're communicating really clearly and neither feels like they understand. And so the double empathy problem is that we communicate experience and display emotions and how we interact with people form form friendships and the world around us is different autistic people experience that different to non autistic people and that can create some difficulties there in that communication style. So when people with very different experiences in the world interact with one another they will struggle to empathise with one another and this is likely to be exacerbated through differences in language use comprehension and brain styles. So that's the double empathy problem. When we come back to Cassandra syndrome regardless of why the Cassandra syndrome term continues to resonate with people it does and sometimes people hearing that and knowing that provides some insight and relief. Now when I see this in my work it is really quite difficult and people come into couples therapy to talk about communication or conflict they're usually the most common ones and I see this play out in conversation so one partner might say something like I felt embarrassed when you made that joke in dinner and the other person says it was just a joke you're too sensitive someone might say I need you to back me up when your dad was rude the other replies he wasn't being rude you misunderstood or you're always being so dramatic it didn't mean like that. These moments are not often meant to be cruel but they dismiss the other person's emotional reality over time the person that receives that on the receiving end starts to pull back maybe they lash out or maybe they go quiet either way that emotional connection suffers loneliness starts to creep in you start to feel disconnected and rely on your partner less and less or maybe communicate with them less and less or get angry and get really heightened. Now this is not just about autism on your divergent when I was doing some research for this a little R research not a formal project I was seeing people talk about this from both sides I was seeing autistic people talk about this from their expense being like yeah I'm told the truth and no one is believing me no one's understanding my point of view and then I'm seeing neurotypical people say I've shed all this stuff and they're ignoring it or they're saying that wasn't true or that's not how it met and getting really defensive and over time that can lead to some really difficult dynamics in the relationship so this is while it's used in this in this context of autism and neurotypical relationships it can happen in any relationships between two neurotypical people between two neuro divergent people between friends colleagues parents and teens what it really comes down to in my understanding of it is emotional misotunement the belief that validating someone's experience means agreeing with them often I see people try to fix things or fact check or defend or try and provide perspective or context or justify the intention wasn't that instead of just sitting with the discomfort they think that they're offering perspective but what the other person needed in that moment is often empathy and validation and I'm going to say it again validating someone's experience does not mean you agree with them if you say that must have felt awful to be at a dinner table and someone make a joke at your expense that doesn't mean that you will agree that that joke was meant to be hurtful but if your partner says I felt embarrassed when you made that joke at dinner then saying it makes sense that you would feel embarrassed I can see that this is an awkward environment it doesn't mean that that was your intention so validating does not mean you have to agree it's understanding from their perspective or their position how what they're feeling thinking makes sense to them in a therapy context I would probably be pausing these conversations and be pointing out when someone's experience is being dismissed and when I come back to some of the challenges I had with this term I felt like it was forcing autistic people to mask that they had to be more palatable in their approach that it meant that they had to adapt and manipulate their behaviour manipulate they had to adapt and mask essentially and that's not what I want to do I want to create an environment where people can be themselves and develop relationship skills or relational intelligence to have difficult conversations where both people feel hurt so when this is happening I would be asking someone you know can we just stay with what was said without needing to correct it right now I help people notice when they're moving into logic or defense I might help people explore those four horsemen that I've talked about in previous episode I'll pop it into that in the show notes so you can check it out and I might say things like that sounded like a rebuttal can we come back to what they were feeling so giving people the skill to reflect on what their partner is saying and I often talk about why it can be really hard to validate something you don't agree with I hear people practicing by saying things like I can see why that hurt even if I wouldn't have read it that way we don't want to add that bit just saying I can see why that hurt I know that sometimes we think if they can just see it from my point of view they wouldn't feel that way if they could just understand that that wasn't my intention they wouldn't be upset and then I wouldn't be uncomfortable the fact that they're upset that's not helpful in this scenario being able to say I can see why that hurt it makes sense that you felt disappointed I understand why you would have felt rejected in that moment you don't have to feel the exact same thing yourself in that scenario you don't have to think well that's not what the person meant so they shouldn't feel that way it's what that person's reality I unpack why validation feels dangerous to some people that it feels like they're losing ground that they're losing respect that they're admitting to something that they didn't think was wrong and it's not about that because that fear or feeling like you did something wrong or you're going to get into trouble and they're not being able to validate that person's experience it really shuts the conversation down so trying to support both partners to see how dismissiveness can be protected but it's not helpful in these conversations that work we do needs to slow things down and stay in the moment especially when emotions show up try to practice curiosity over correction and connection over correction nobody wants to go into all their relationships and just be given feedback and corrected and adjusted and improved and optimized we want to feel connected okay we want to find as many small moments to build emotional safety again and start to reduce the impact of Cassandra syndrome because what can happen if you've been feeling like this if you've been feeling disconnected that your emotions aren't valid that your subjective risk experience is wrong at best it can lead to some disconnection and loneliness at worst it can lead to some very severe symptoms of mental ill health we can see significant symptoms of anxiety and depression and nobody wants that nobody wants that for their partner either so this is a really important piece of work to understand to get some support around so that you can have the thriving happy connected relationship that you want if you're the one who feels like you're waving the flag and then being told to calm down or you've started to doubt your own perceptions maybe you've stopped speaking up because it never lands you're not making it up it might not be intentional it still matters it can still hurt and repair is possible with the right support it is possible to feel hurt respected and safe again if this has made you reflect on some of your own reactions maybe you're the one who struggles to validate that's okay too these patterns are common but they're also changeable hey there me again just wanted to quickly remind you about the relationship new you reset if you and your partner care about each other but keep having the same arguments or feel a bit out of sync lately or maybe everything's fine and you want to have 2026 be your best year yet I am running a live session where I walk couples through seven short conversations that help you slow down understand each other better and get back on the same page nothing too heavy hopefully nothing too awkward just the conversations that most couples never get around to having or guide you every step of the way they'll be heaps of prompts they'll be a workbook everything you need to have 2026 be your best year yet it's live on the 28th of January you can find a link in the show notes